1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic devices for assisting a preschooler to read, and in particular, an apparatus and a method for enunciating and/or verbally explaining a word, phrase or any select portion of a book.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is known that children's books having electronic sound generating devices can entertain as well as captivate the interest of a child. One such electronic book has a strip disposed along an edge of a book and a plurality of touch-sensitive pads arranged along the strip. Each of the pads corresponds to a particular sound effect and has a graphic picture printed thereon. These same pictures also appear in the text of the book, such as in the middle or at the end of a sentence, for prompting the child to press the pad on the strip to thereby generate the intended sound effect for the story being read. Although they are entertaining, such books do not teach children how to pronounce letters, words, or phrases and thus require an adult to read along with the child.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,538,430 to Smith et al. discloses a self-reading child's book having an electronic sound generating device and a light-emitting diode (LED) under each word. These LEDs are automatically and sequentially illuminated as the child activates a switch associated with each LED so that the sound generating device enunciates the words in sequence. The disclosed electronic book is costly to manufacture as it requires an array of electronic devices to be incorporated into each page of the book.
Thus, there is a need for a low-cost reading tutor device for use with a conventional book, and which is both easy and fun to use by beginning readers, particularly, preschoolers.